“I wish I felt as sure!” he muttered bluntly. “You know that all our people are dead?”
“He can save by few or by many,” the preacher answered devoutly. “We are of the few, blessed be God, and shall see Israel victorious, and our people as a flock of sheep!”
“I see small chance of it,” Tignonville answered contemptuously.
“I know it as certainly as I knew before you came, M. de Tignonville, that you would come!”
“That I should come?”
“That some one would come,” La Tribe answered, correcting himself. “I knew not who it would be until you appeared and placed yourself in the doorway over against me, even as Obadiah in the Holy Book passed before the hiding-place of Elijah.”
The two lay on their faces side by side, the rafters of the archway low on their heads. Tignonville lifted himself a little, and peered anew at the other. He fancied that La Tribe’s mind, shaken by the horrors of the morning and his narrow escape, had given way.
“You rave, man,” he said. “This is no time for visions.”
“I said naught of visions,” the other answered.
“Then why so sure that we shall escape?”
“I am certified of it,” La Tribe replied. “And more than that, I know that we shall lie here some days. The time has not been revealed to me, but it will be days and a day. Then we shall leave this place unharmed, as we entered it, and, whatever betide others, we shall live.”
Tignonville shrugged his shoulders. “I tell you, you rave, M. la Tribe,” he said petulantly. “At any moment we may be discovered. Even now I hear footsteps.”
“They tracked me well-nigh to this place,” the minister answered placidly.
“The deuce they did!” Tignonville muttered, with irritation. He dared not raise his voice. “I would you had told me that before I joined you, Monsieur, and I had found some safer hiding-place! When we are discovered—”
“Then,” the other continued calmly, “you will see.”
“In any case we shall be better farther back,” Tignonville retorted. “Here, we are within an ace of being seen from the lane.” And he began to wriggle himself backwards.
The minister laid his hand on him. “Have a care!” he muttered. “And do not move, but listen. And you will understand. When I reached this place — it would be about five o’clock this morning — breathless, and expecting each minute to be dragged forth to make my confession before men, I despaired as you despair now. Like Elijah under the juniper tree, I said, ‘It is enough, O Lord! Take my soul also, for I am no better than my fellows!’ All the sky was black before my eyes, and my ears were filled with the wailings of the little ones and the lamentations of women. ‘O Lord, it is enough,’ I prayed. ‘Take my soul, or, if it be Thy will, then, as the angel was sent to take the cakes to Elijah, give me also a sign that I shall live.’”
For a moment he paused, struggling with overpowering emotion. Even his impatient listener, hitherto incredulous, caught the infection, and in a tone of awe murmured —
“Yes? And then, M. la Tribe!”
“The sign was given me. The words were scarcely out of my mouth when a hen flew up, and, scratching a nest in the hay at my feet, presently laid an egg.”
Tignonville stared. “It was timely, I admit,” he said. “But it is no uncommon thing. Probably it has its nest here and lays daily.”
“Young man, this is new-mown hay,” the minister answered solemnly. “This cart was brought here no further back than yesterday. It smells of the meadow, and the flowers hold their colour. No, the fowl was sent. To-morrow it will return, and the next, and the next, until the plague be stayed and I go hence. But that is not all. A while later a second hen appeared, and I thought it would lay in the same nest. But it made a new one, on the side on which you lie and not far from your foot. Then I knew that I was to have a companion, and that God had laid also for him a table in the wilderness.”
“It did lay, then?”
“It is still on the nest, beside your foot.”
Tignonville was about to reply when the preacher grasped his arm and by a sign enjoined silence. He did so not a moment too soon. Preoccupied by the story, narrator and listener had paid no heed to what was passing in the lane, and the voices of men speaking close at hand took them by surprise. From the first words which reached them, it was clear that the speakers were the same who had chased La Tribe as far as the meeting of the four ways, and, losing him there, had spent the morning in other business. Now they had returned to hunt him down; and but for a wrangle which arose among them and detained them, they had stolen on their quarry before their coming was suspected.
“’Twas this way he ran!” “No, ’twas the other!” they contended; and their words, winged with vile threats and oaths, grew noisy and hot. The two listeners dared scarcely to breathe. The danger was so near, it was so certain that if the men came three paces farther, they would observe and search the haycart, that Tignonville fancied the steel already at his throat. He felt the hay rustle under his slightest movement, and gripped one hand with the other to restrain the tremor of overpowering excitement. Yet when he glanced at the minister he found him unmoved, a smile on his face. And M. de Tignonville could have cursed him for his folly.
For the men were coming on! An instant, and they perceived the cart, and the ruffian who had advised this route pounced on it in triumph.
“There! Did I not say so?” he cried. “He is curled up in that hay, for the Satan’s grub he is! That is where he is, see you!”
“Maybe,” another answered grudgingly, as they gathered before it. “And maybe not, Simon!”
“To hell with your maybe not!” the first replied. And he drove his pike deep into the hay and turned it viciously.
The two on the top controlled themselves. Tignonville’s face was livid; of himself he would have slid down amongst them and taken his chance, preferring to die fighting, to die in the open, rather than to perish like a rat in a stack. But La Tribe had gripped his arm and held him fast.
The man whom the others called Simon thrust again, but too low and without result. He was for trying a third time, when one of his comrades who had gone to the other side of the lane announced that the men were on the top of the hay.
“Can you see them?”
“No, but there’s room and to spare.”
“Oh, a curse on your room!” Simon retorted. “Well, you can look.”
“If that’s all, I’ll soon look!” was the answer. And the rogue, forcing himself between the hay and the side of the gateway, found the wheel of the cart, and began to raise himself on it.
Tignonville, who lay on that hand, heard, though he could not see his movements. He knew what they meant, he knew that in a twinkling he must be discovered; and with a last prayer he gathered himself for a spring.
It seemed an age before the intruder’s head appeared on a level with the hay; and then the alarm came from another quarter. The hen which had made its nest at Tignonville’s feet, disturbed by the movement or by the newcomer’s hand, flew out with a rush and flutter as of a great firework. Upsetting the startled Simon, who slipped swearing to the ground, it swooped scolding and clucking over the heads of the other men, and reaching the street in safety, scuttled off at speed, its outspread wings sweeping the earth in its rage.
They laughed uproariously as Simon emerged, rubbing his elbow.
“There’s for you! There’s your preacher!” his opponent jeered.
“D — n her! she gives tongue as fast as any of them!” gibed a second. “Will you try again, Simon? You may find another love-letter there!”
“Have done!” a third cried impatiently. “He’ll not be where the hen is! Let’s back! Let’s back! I said before that it wasn’t this way he turned! He’s made for the river.”
“The plague in his vitals!” Simon replied furiously. “Wherever he is, I’ll find him!” And, reluctant to confess himself wrong, he lingered, casting vengeful glances at the hay.
But one of the other men cursed him for a fool; and presently, forced to accept his defeat or be left alone, he rejoined his fellows. Slowly the footsteps and voices receded along the lane; slowly, until silence swallowed them, and on the quivering strained senses of the two who remained behind, descended the gentle influence of twilight and the sweet scent of the new-mown hay on which they lay.
La Tribe turned to his companion, his eyes shining. “Our soul is escaped,” he murmured, “even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler. The snare is broken and we are delivered!” His voice shook as he whispered the ancient words of triumph.
But when they came to look in the nest at Tignonville’s feet there was no egg!
CHAPTER IX. UNSTABLE.
And that troubled M. la Tribe no little, although he did not impart his thoughts to his companion. Instead they talked in whispers of the things which had happened; of the Admiral, of Teligny, whom all loved, of Rochefoucauld the accomplished, the King’s friend; of the princes in the Louvre whom they gave up for lost, and of the Huguenot nobles on the farther side of the river, of whose safety there seemed some hope. Tignonville — he best knew why — said nothing of the fate of his betrothed, or of his own adventures in that connection. But each told the other how the alarm had reached him, and painted in broken words his reluctance to believe in treachery so black. Thence they passed to the future of the cause, and of that took views as opposite as light and darkness, as Papegot and Huguenot. The one was confident, the other in despair. And some time in the afternoon, worn out by the awful experiences of the last twelve hours, they fell asleep, their heads on their arms, the hay tickling their faces; and, with death stalking the lane beside them, slept soundly until after sundown.
When they awoke hunger awoke with them, and urged on La Tribe’s mind the question of the missing egg. It was not altogether the prick of appetite which troubled him, but regarding the hiding-place in which they lay as an ark of refuge providentially supplied, protected and victualled, he could not refrain from asking reverently what the deficiency meant. It was not as if one hen only had appeared; as if no farther prospect had been extended. But up to a certain point the message was clear. Then when the Hand of Providence had shown itself most plainly, and in a manner to melt the heart with awe and thankfulness, the message had been blurred. Seriously the Huguenot asked himself what it portended.
To Tignonville, if he thought of it at all, the matter was the matter of an egg, and stopped there. An egg might alleviate the growing pangs of hunger; its non-appearance was a disappointment, but he traced the matter no farther. It must be confessed, too, that the haycart was to him only a haycart — and not an ark; and the sooner he was safely away from it the better he would be pleased. While La Tribe, lying snug and warm beside him, thanked God for a lot so different from that of such of his fellows as had escaped — whom he pictured crouching in dank cellars, or on roof-trees exposed to the heat by day and the dews by night — the young man grew more and more restive.
Hunger pricked him, and the meanness of the part he had played moved him to action. About midnight, resisting the dissuasions of his companion, he would have sallied out in search of food if the passage of a turbulent crowd had not warned him that the work of murder was still proceeding. He curbed himself after that and lay until daylight. But, ill content with his own conduct, on fire when he thought of his betrothed, he was in no temper to bear hardship cheerfully or long; and gradually there rose before his mind the picture of Madame St. Lo’s smiling face, and the fair hair which curled low on the white of her neck.
He would, and he would not. Death that had stalked so near him preached its solemn sermon. But death and pleasure are never far apart; and at no time and nowhere have they jostled one another more familiarly than in that age, wherever the influence of Italy and Italian art and Italian hopelessness extended. Again, on the one side, La Tribe’s example went for something with his comrade in misfortune; but in the other scale hung relief from discomfort, with the prospect of a woman’s smiles and a woman’s flatteries, of dainty dishes, luxury, and passion. If he went now, he went to her from the jaws of death, with the glamour of adventure and peril about him; and the very going into her presence was a lure. Moreover, if he had been willing while his betrothed was still his, why not now when he had lost her?
It was this last reflection — and one other thing which came on a sudden into his mind — which turned the scale. About noon he sat up in the hay, and, abruptly and sullenly, “I’ll lie here no longer,” he said; and he dropped his legs over the side. “I shall go.”
The movement was so unexpected that La Tribe stared at him in silence. Then, “You will run a great risk, M. de Tignonville,” he said gravely, “if you do. You may go as far under cover of night as the river, or you may reach one of the gates. But as to crossing the one or passing the other, I reckon it a thing impossible.”
“I shall not wait until night,” Tignonville answered curtly, a ring of defiance in his tone. “I shall go now! I’ll lie here no longer!”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“You will be mad if you do,” the other replied. He thought it the petulant outcry of youth tired of inaction; a protest, and nothing more.
He was speedily undeceived. “Mad or not, I am going!” Tignonville retorted. And he slid to the ground, and from the covert of the hanging fringe of hay looked warily up and down the lane. “It is clear, I think,” he said. “Good-bye.” And with no more, without one upward glance or a gesture of the hand, with no further adieu or word of gratitude, he walked out into the lane, turned briskly to the left, and vanished.
The minister uttered a cry of surprise, and made as if he would descend also.
“Come back, sir!” he called, as loudly as he dared. “M. de Tignonville, come back! This is folly or worse!”
But M. de Tignonville was gone.
La Tribe listened a while, unable to believe it, and still expecting his return. At last, hearing nothing, he slid, greatly excited, to the ground and looked out. It was not until he had peered up and down the lane and made sure that it was empty that he could persuade himself that the other had gone for good. Then he climbed slowly and seriously to his place again, and sighed as he settled himself.
“Unstable as water thou shalt not excel!” he muttered. “Now I know why there was only one egg.”
Meanwhile Tignonville, after putting a hundred yards between himself and his bedfellow, plunged into the first dark entry which presented itself. Hurriedly, and with a frowning face, he cut off his left sleeve from shoulder to wrist; and this act, by disclosing his linen, put him in possession of the white sleeve which he had once involuntarily donned, and once discarded. The white cross on the cap he could not assume, for he was bareheaded. But he had little doubt that the sleeve would suffice, and with a bold demeanour he made his way northward until he reached again the Rue Ferronerie.
Excited groups were wandering up and down the street, and, fearing to traverse its crowded narrows, he went by lanes parallel with it as far as the Rue St. Denis, which he crossed. Everywhere he saw houses gutted and doors burst in, and traces of a cruelty and a fanaticism almost incredible. Near the Rue des Lombards he saw a dead child, stripped stark and hanged on the hook of a cobbler’s shutter. A little farther on in the same street he stepped over the body of a handsome young woman, distinguished by the length and beauty of her hair. To obtain her bracelets, her captors had cut off her hands; afterwards — but God knows how long afterwards — a passer-by, more pitiful than his fellows, had put her out of her misery with a spit, which still remained plunged in her body.
M. de Tignonville shuddered at the sight, and at others like it. He loathed the symbol he wore, and himself for wearing it; and more than once his better nature bade him return and play the nobler part. Once he did turn with that intention. But he had set his mind on comfort and pleasure, and the value of these things is raised, not lowered, by danger and uncertainty. Qui
ckly his stoicism oozed away; he turned again. Barely avoiding the rush of a crowd of wretches who were bearing a swooning victim to the river, he hurried through the Rue des Lombards, and reached in safety the house beside the Golden Maid.
He had no doubt now on which side of the Maid Madame St. Lo lived; the house was plain before him. He had only to knock. But in proportion as he approached his haven, his anxiety grew. To lose all, with all in his grasp, to fail upon the threshold, was a thing which bore no looking at; and it was with a nervous hand and eyes cast fearfully behind him that he plied the heavy iron knocker which adorned the door.
He could not turn his gaze from a knot of ruffians, who were gathered under one of the tottering gables on the farther side of the street. They seemed to be watching him, and he fancied — though the distance rendered this impossible — that he could see suspicion growing in their eyes. At any moment they might cross the roadway, they might approach, they might challenge him. And at the thought he knocked and knocked again. Why did not the porter come?
Ay, why? For now a score of contingencies came into the young man’s mind and tortured him. Had Madame St. Lo withdrawn to safer quarters and closed the house? Or, good Catholic as she was, had she given way to panic, and determined to open to no one? Or was she ill? Or had she perished in the general disorder? Or —
And then, even as the men began to slink towards him, his heart leapt. He heard a footstep heavy and slow move through the house. It came nearer and nearer. A moment, and an iron-grated Judas-hole in the door slid open, and a servant, an elderly man, sleek and respectable, looked out at him.
Tignonville could scarcely speak for excitement. “Madame St. Lo?” he muttered tremulously. “I come to her from her cousin the Comte de Tavannes. Quick! quick! if you please. Open to me!”
“Monsieur is alone?”
“Yes! Yes!”
The man nodded gravely and slid back the bolts. He allowed M. de Tignonville to enter, then with care he secured the door, and led the way across a small square court, paved with red tiles and enclosed by the house, but open above to the sunshine and the blue sky. A gallery which ran round the upper floor looked on this court, in which a great quiet reigned, broken only by the music of a fountain. A vine climbed on the wooden pillars which supported the gallery, and, aspiring higher, embraced the wide carved eaves, and even tapestried with green the three gables that on each side of the court broke the skyline. The grapes hung nearly ripe, and amid their clusters and the green lattice of their foliage Tignonville’s gaze sought eagerly but in vain the laughing eyes and piquant face of his new mistress. For with the closing of the door, and the passing from him of the horrors of the streets, he had entered, as by magic, a new and smiling world; a world of tennis and roses, of tinkling voices and women’s wiles, a world which smacked of Florence and the South, and love and life; a world which his late experiences had set so far away from him, his memory of it seemed a dream. Now, as he drank in its stillness and its fragrance, as he felt its safety and its luxury lap him round once more, he sighed. And with that breath he rid himself of much.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 375